Archive for month: September, 2010

Citing a long list of rabbinic rulings and precedent, Rabbi Shlomo Aviner rules against using chickens for kapparot.

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, head of the capital’s Yeshivat Ateret Cohanim and rabbi of Beit El, not only provided SPCA Israel with a letter last week showing the faultiness of the rit

e, basing his arguments on some of the greatest arbitrators, but went on video to expound on the halachic traditions proving why it’s wrong to inflict such cruelty on God’s creations, especially when the underlying motivation is absolution of one’s sins before the same God, as Aviner quotes former Tel Aviv Rabbi Chaim David Halevi.

http://rabbiyonah.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/cropped-RabbiYonahbookCover11.jpg00rabbiyonahhttp://rabbiyonah.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/cropped-RabbiYonahbookCover11.jpgrabbiyonah2010-09-16 08:33:372010-09-16 08:33:37Major Israeli Scholar Calls For End To Using Chickens For Kapparot

UPDAET: Sarah Shourd was released this week! Keep up the pressure on Iran to release the last two hikers.

Josh Fattal and his friends Shane and Sarah were arrested by Iran one year ago.

Remember Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Joshua Fattal? The three were arrested by Iranian authorities July 31, 2009, during what their friends and families describe as a hiking trip in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, which borders Iran. Tehran officials say the three crossed illegally into Iranian territory.

The three young Americans, all graduates of the University of California at Berkeley, are believed to be held in the Iranian capital, Tehran. They have had no contact with their families, and have not been granted their right to consular access.

Jonathan Pollard was convicted 25 years ago of passing on US secrets to Israel, an American ally, and was sentenced to life in prison. Pollards backers have proven his punishment did not fit the crime.

Elie Wiesel has launched a global campaign to free former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is on trial in Moscow for embezzlement and theft.

Alan is wrongfully imprisoned (undoubtedly along with hundreds of others) in Cuba for handing out cell phones.

Clinton makes plea for Cuban detainee Alan Gross

July 14, 2010

WASHINGTON (JTA) — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asked Jewish groups to press the case of Alan Gross, an American Jew imprisoned in Cuba.

Gross, 60, has been held since his Dec. 3 arrest for assisting the Cuban Jewish community to connect to the Internet. He was contracted to the U.S. Agency for International Development….

“Our government works every single day through every channel for his release and safe return home,” Clinton said. “But I am really making an appeal to the active Jewish community here in our country to join this cause.”

Ironically, it takes Sen. Clinton to wake up the Jewish community to the plight of there imprisoned Jews, and the opportunity to pursue the mitzvah of pidyon shevuim, for which it is permissible to break the Sabbath.

Undoubtedly there are more Jewish prisoners – may they all be released soon.

Next time you’re at the Kotel or when you hear the shofar blowing think about these guys:

Under a British law in Palestine passed in 1930, Jews were forbidden to blow the shofar at the Kotel, pray loudly there, or bring Torah scrolls, so as not to offend the Arab population… Despite this restriction, for the next seventeen years, the shofar was sounded at the Kotel every Yom Kippur. Shofars were smuggled in to the Kotel where brave teenagers defiantly blew them at the conclusion of the fast. Some managed to get away – others were captured and sent to jail for up to six months… Six of these men are still alive… Two weeks ago, these six men returned to the scene of their “crime”. Armed with shofars, they recounted their individual stories and blew shofar again at the Kotel.